iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 25/09/2026

I see an eye being stitched shut. I see a kayak breaking through stagnant water.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 25/09/2026

Met this guy who wanted to see how my specs looked on him.

Anatomical skeleton model donning a pair of light blue spectacles.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 24/09/2026

I've tried, but didn't find the opening intriguing.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 24/09/2026

Post a real photo you took, no context.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 24/09/2026

Didn't know this book had a sequel.

Book cover for Surviving the Apple whites by Stephanie S. Tolan.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 08/09/2026

All embryos don't start off as female, though.

Mammals don’t start as females, they start as a blank slate with XX or XY genetic code, and for the first 5-6 weeks of gestation only the X gene expresses. Then when the Y gene starts expressing (in genetic XY-males), it releases androgens like testosterone, represses some X gene expression (and estrogen development), and expresses specific Y genes. This process is called sexual differentiation and it leads to what we call male and female.

No, human embryos are not all female; chromosomal sex is set at fertilization and early tissues just look alike before male or female traits appear.

No, that is not true. The sex of humans is determined from fertilization, that is, as soon as it becomes a zygote: if it is XX, it will be a female, while, if it is XY, a male. However, at the beginning, human embryos have the precursors of both female and male gonads.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 06/09/2026

I drew this with a biro and pencil when I was about 7.

Spiderman in a squat position, arms outstretched, streaming webs. There's a red-stemmed plant above with blue leaves and to the left of it are the legs of a figure partly out of frame.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 29/05/2026

I really want to be a part of the decision making process for the book covers of the books I will write so I can show the artist these covers so they know what I'm all about.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 06/05/2026

Shrek coming in between was a palate cleanser.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 03/03/2026

My poem will get exhibited at Nottingham Central library this month.😁

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 24/02/2026

The first draft of a novel I wrote three years ago was so bad that I still don't know where I was going with the story. I'm considering hunting down the notebooks they're in and incinerating the leaves.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 24/02/2026

He needs to check for radioactive spider bites.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 22/02/2026

Blimey, could this be why I couldn't get the desired information I needed on model predictive control?

@TeamYouTube: Your activity on YouTube & Google can influence your search results, recommendations on the Home page, in-app notifications,& suggested
videos. You can manage your homepage
recommendation by selecting "Not
interested" to remove the video in your
feed or "Don't recommend channel" so vids from a specific channel don't show in your recommendations. We get that this can be frustrating, but you can view this resource for more info: goo.gle/30CRRU8

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 22/02/2026

May this reasoning stay very far away from me.🤮

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 22/02/2026

Build a trilogy out of 3 unrelated films.

Movie poster for A Different Man (2024).

Two men are seated. The man on the left has a deformed face. The title card is bold red: A DIFFERENT MAN

A nude woman lain on her side in a white tiled bathroom. Her back is facing away from us, stitched up along the spine, her head rested on a towel. Title card in bold white: THE SUBSTANCE

The whole frame is occupied by a white woman clothed in purple. There is a vial superimposed between her cleavage, tines of electricity sprouting from the top and bottom.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 21/02/2026

That's because no one is talking about lookism.

Original post with caption: Genocide makes you ugly. The image attached is of David Schwimmer, whose words are written: STANDING WITH ISRAEL MEANS STANDING FOR JUSTICE.

A post quotes the whole thing: Guys, can we stop with this pretty=morality rhetoric. Is being pro-genocide not enough to hate them?

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 21/02/2026

First of all, the mockery is bad, not the criticism. The criticism is not necessarily ableist, but if you want to go there, then how do those who can't read at all work on their own writing that they can't read? Also, the criticism doesn't look like it's about people who don't read for pleasure.

Post: There's a thread going around
mocking writers who "don't read very
much" and I'm trying not to haul out
my soap box but...this is ableist? Not
everyone can read for pleasure (or
indeed at all) and some of those
people are writers.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 20/02/2026

This discourse is embarassing. If quality is of no concern, you don't have to read novels to write them, but you do have to read good novels to write good ones. Since when has mastery not involved looking into and/or studying the works of contemporaries and those that came before you?

HEADING:Writers Debate:
Must You Read
Novels to Write
Them?

CAPTION: Novelist Aaron Gwyn questioned
fiction students dreaming of novels without favorite authors, prompting fantasy author Ana Mardoll to call reading encouragement ableist due to disabilities and burnout. Charles Dodd White claimed aspiring
writers need 25+ novels yearly for quality work, but freelancers like Joanna Schroeder countered she's published widely despite skipping fiction amid her editorial job, three kids, and busy life.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 15/02/2026

Disney, your villain songs are oft so good!

A screenshot of Poor Unfortunate Souls by Melissa McCarthy. The song art shows a poster of The Little Mermaid live action movie: a mermaid underwater, sitting on sea rock and looking up at the sunlight shining into the deep.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 06/02/2026

I get my news from a reliable source.

Picture of an arm in black long sleeves. A butterfly is perched on top.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 14/01/2026

Here's an initiative by investment experts who sought to educate on certain financial concepts by contracting writers to make a collection of stories on them. Reading fiction is not a waste of time.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 06/12/2025

Maybe it's the original blueprint of Superman, but I found the man of steel to be too idealistic that it almost borders on stupidity. Here's something he should think about:

"An idealist is one who, upon
observing that a rose smells
better than a cabbage, concludes
that it will also make better
soup."

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 02/12/2025

As a Nigerian, what is this scene even talking about?

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 26/11/2025

Was reading from a textbook on state-space modeling (a control engineering component) and the author thought to recommend Star Wars.😅

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 26/11/2025

I watched Parasite (2019) three days ago and had a thought!

A Korean man in black, hands in pockets.

"The cinematography here is done in such a way that the movie really does away with any ideas of leaving the ending open-ended. It's pretty definitive and clear
imo that the son's ambitions seem futile, hopeless and they will never come true."

Me: To add to this, the son's daydream sequence shows his father ascending from the basement, spurting black hair and seemingly not aged a day even after all the years that must have passed. This, I think, is emblematic that his dream is highly improbable.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 26/11/2025

You don't need a software to write well. You can literally use charcoal and a dated parchment. Tolstoy didn't need scrivener and Proust definitely didn't use a laptop to write In Search of Lost Time. If you think the tools others use are the reason why you aren't as good as they are, you're wrong.

A man standing up amidst seated people. He is apparently making an indictment.

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joseph abiola @josephabiola.substack.com · 25/11/2025

Humpty Dumpty making its way subconsciously into the writing?

"After you fall, you can put yourself back together again", says a woman to a man hanging from a rain gutter.

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